Giovanni Lanfranco

Lanfranco, Giovanni (jōvänˈnē länfrängˈkō) [key], 1582–1647, Italian painter. Lanfranco is considered one of the foremost artists of the High Baroque. He was trained by the Carracci and worked primarily in Rome and Naples, where he executed numerous decorative plans for churches and palaces. Lanfranco greatly extended the scope of the illusionism that he had studied in the works of Correggio and the Carracci. His remarkable trompe l'oeil designs, characterized by piercing shafts of light illuminating boldly foreshortened, cloud-borne figures that recede into infinite celestial distances, were endlessly imitated throughout Europe. Among his greatest works are the ceiling of the Casino Borghese (1616) and the dome of San Andrea della Valle (1621–25), both in Rome, and the magnificent ceiling of the Chapel of San Gennaro in Naples Cathedral (1641). The brilliant, translucent quality of his later works is displayed by his apse painting for San Carlo ai Catinari (Rome, 1646), his last work.